Bradford City play Aldershot Town At Valley Parade in League Two, 2010/2011

Watching Nottingham Forest sneak into sixth place in the Championship at the expense of Leeds United it was remarked that one might not have predicted Forest would do so well after their defeat to Bradford City in the second game of the season.

That evening David Syers’ debut goal and an extra time strike from James Hanson gave City a 2-1 win and seemed to kick start a season which promised much. That early indication was as close as the club got to the season starting in earnest and some eight months on as City fans watch a team struggle with relegation one feels a little robbed of a year of football.

Not that we expected much from the season – Mark Lawn and the rest of the Valley Parade board did to such an extent where The City Gent’s Mike Harrison was hauled over the coals for predicting that the Bantams would be finish a place outside the play offs. Mike was – it seems – right that we would not be in the top seven.

One might wonder though what impact the predictions and preferences of supporters have on a football club. There was a school of thought – helped by the financial mechanics of the bookmaking industry – that City would be favourites this season which went alongside the predictions for Harrison (and from myself, for I was no more confident) and all these are set against a near constant stream of negativity which is tied to the club like a stone around the leg of a drowning man.

On that subject one can only look in envy at groups of supporters who realise the impact they can have on their team. City fans – it seems – have long since made a choice that the players are very much on their own and as the Bantams look for three points to end the season without relegation they do so alone.

Luke Oliver – a target for abuse regardless of his performances – sneered at City fans singing to him and his team mates that they were not fit to wear the shirt over at Accrington and will have gone into the dressing room to hear Peter Jackson agreeing but nothing in the club invites Oliver or his team mates passions.

For sure any professional pride you have might mean you want to win, but on the days when your opposition have the same professional pride and a crowd who want them to do well, who encourage them and who try lift them, playing for a manager who lives and breaths the club then one wonders what we want the mercenaries who we gather together every summer to care about?

Assuming the current crop of players – those who are “encouraged on” by being told they represent the worst Bradford City team in forty years – can steal three points in the next three games then the club – assuming that it can struggle into next season without the self inflicted wounds of administration – then let they be the last who are so poorly assembled.

My belief is that players are much of a muchness at this level and that the current set will be replaced by players no better, no worse, but that it is up to a club, a manager and a set of supporters to build those players into a team. The club can offer contracts of a length and a stability that encourage the players to realise that their futures are tied to the team’s performance, the manager can instil belief and desire in those players, and that supporters can – for once – decide to swallow the scream of abuse which vents their own frustration but creates or furthers the cauldron of negativity which Bradford City has become.

Or not, and we can try carry on like this.

Jon McLaughlin seems ready to return for Lenny Pidgeley in goal for the Bantams as we look to record a win over Aldershot which could end relegation fears. A defeat for Barnet at home to Oxford United and a win for the Bantams would see City safe mathematically.

Lewis Hunt will continue at right back with Luke Oliver paired with either Lee Bullock or Steve Williams should Williams have recovered from illness. Luke O’Brien will hope for a recall at left back over Robbie Threlfall.

Tommy Doherty is – we are told – fit to play but not being selected. Mark Lawn spoke about only wanting to sign players who wanted to play for Bradford City and it seems that Doherty was certainly amongst the those covered in that criticism. Not that the criticism is especially valid. Most players we approach would want to play for the club but the trick is making sure that they still want to play for Bradford City after a few months.

Instead Jon Worthington and Michael Flynn make up City’s midfield. Flynn’s efforts are seemingly the target of criticism themselves by some supporters with the idea being that since he has returned from injury he has “struggled for form” or “been rubbish” depending on your vernacular. Dropping the players who put in effort, in an attempt to get more effort, is no solution I could subscribe to.

Kevin Ellison is fit to return but will most likely be kept to the bench as David Syers and Omar Daley take the wings although there is an idea that Peter Jackson will use Daley as a second striker alongside James Hanson with Jake Speight dropping to the bench alongside Gareth Evans.

With undoubted ability – recall Northampton last season – and a willingness to work hard on many, many occasions Gareth Evans cuts a forlorn figure which perfectly represents the Bantams lack progress.

Seldom does one see a football who has so obviously had all the joy of playing football squeezed out of him.

Now we ask players like him to squeeze out just one more win, before sending them away and replacing them with the next set of hopefully to be crushed on the broken wheels that make no progress.

11 comments

You say ‘nothing in the club invites Oliver’s or his team mates passions’. I would argue that BCFC are offering a weekly wage to a number of players who should be very grateful for gainful employment in the professional game. I struggle to see how ‘nothing…invites Oliver’s or his team mates passions’ – they are being paid to play for an excellently supported club in a good stadium with fans whose default setting is inertia with the occasional lapse into abuse. Even these lapses aren’t entirely inexplicable bearing in mind how woeful the last ten years have been. I don’t agree with abusing your own players but I do understand the frustration.

Broadly speaking I think City fans have been very tolerant indeed of our worst side for a generation. Our players generally don’t lack for effort – I just think that for various reasons they haven’t been able to deliver good enough performances on a consistent basis.

The problem is Nick that yes Oliver et al are being paid but so is every other player that they come up against so – in effect – it is meaningless. Paying full time players in the Conference offers a competitive advantage (because some players are part time) but in the Football League it does not.

Which is not to say that getting paid does not motivate anyone but rather that it is not going to motivate our players more than getting paid by any other club motivates their players so we can expect, in effect, the effect of being paid to cancel out between professional teams who pay roughly the same amounts.

Interesting point. If every League Two player were offered the same wage irrespective of which club they were playing for, which club do we think would be the most popular? Might it be City, the club you argue offers them nothing?

Well I might not be able to answer all of this – I live in Bradford and am happy to do so – but I understand that many a BfB reader has chosen to move out of the City and should one imagine someone like Michael Rankine weighing up a move from York City to Bradford he might conclude that he would rather live in York than in this City.

Now of course you could say that footballers can afford to live somewhere nice and commute in but firstly one would probably be overstating how much a City player earns (average wage of maybe £60,000, take out the likes of Doherty who is on twice that and maybe a City player earns £40,000) and how difficult it is to get a mortgage when you can only prove a single year of payment. This is because City offer short term contracts which counts against City in this idea of being the most popular.

The cost of living is less up North though – University of Bradford promotes itself as being the cheapest place for students to live – but that does not retain the many BfB readers who have moved away.

Rory Boulding – when he arrived from Mansfield – was surprised at how poor the facilities at City was and he is not the only one who has said that. Now I know that people talk about Apperley Bridge “the excuse” but the reality of life as a footballer is that you spend five days a week at the training ground and a day at the stadium and so the reality at City is changing at Valley Parade and driving to Apperley Bridge (although it does include having your kit washed and getting fed)

The stadium is good but the support is not. One can argue all day about a person’s right to bellow abuse at fans or be tolerant but some clubs (like Accrington Stanley) get behind their teams and support them. Given a choice to play for the team where grown men scream their lungs out at kids when they make mistakes or a team where a misplaced pass is greeted with encouragement then which would you choose? Our greatest asset – Valley Parade with 12,000 odd people in – becomes an Achilles’ Heel.

There is ambition at Valley Parade that is for sure and that is a good thing but that ambition manifests itself in a rapid turnover of players and – importantly – managers and if you were talking to City right now about signing and talking or talking to Dag & Red, or Accrington, or Morecambe, or Torquay, or Rochdale and the manager said that he wanted you on a one year deal, but he would give you another year or two after that would you not just conclude that he had no chance of being the man who is in charge of making those deals in 12 months? The teams above have all had their managers for over three and a half years.

Job stability – even if you perform well – is just not there at Bradford City.

If VP worked in our favour and the ambition of the club could be focused then City might have some more things in the “most popular” column but – in answer – no I do not think that City would be the most popular choice if everyone was paid the same.

I suppose it is a chicken and egg situation with the crowd. Many despise the lousy players, they don’t have to play football for £40K, they could I suppose get themselves educated. Having made the choice to play for BCFC you would have thought that a modicum of effort might be forthcoming but alas no. They may well end the season with no further points, they are as we know that poor. Given all of that I think the players and the board have had it easy from the crowd. Taylor inherited a terrible team and Jackson inherited worse. Should they stay in the league and go into administration, letting down creditors for the third time and end next season on 10 points less than they have now then it is curtains. That is if they scrape into the league this time.

I doubt that Zesh Rehman gets less playing in Thailand compared to his wage he got at Bradford City and that offers an option other than League Two football. We had an article with Graeme Tomlinson a year ago where he said that while football was a good way to earn a crust, it was not the only way.

I can only reiterate my belief that this team is not better or worse than the others in League Two. It just plays worse than most.

The nature of football finance – especially at our level – dictates that offering long term contracts is not only difficult but also potentially dangerous. Your excellent interview with Mark Lawn highlighted the fact that we could only afford to offer Peter Taylor a one year deal. Had he been given a longer term contract then the cost of ending his tenure in February (irrespective of whether that decision was the right one) would have been huge.

I agree with most of what you say re: stability, especially managerially, but to be fair to the board I think they have tried hard to tie down key players on longer term contracts. Of the current squad, the following players have had two or three year deals out of the club – Jon McLaughlin, Luke O’Brien, Michael Flynn, Luke Oliver, Omar Daley, James Hanson, Steve Williams, Jake Speight, Leon Osborne. Lewis Hunt & David Syers have activated clauses which have given them each a second year. That’s eleven players in what is statistically a very poor team that have been given what in modern day lower league terms is a long term contract.

Whether or not the above players are deserving of the security the longer term contract offers them is debatable but the board have at least tried to create stability amongst the playing staff.
The lack of managerial stability invites such a long debate that I won’t go into it now or I’d end up missing this afternoon’s game…

I think that you accept that idea of the nature of football finance far too readily. City pay a midfielder: He is Paul Evans, Paul McLaren, Michael Flynn. Does it matter that that is three names or one from a financial point of view? It is not as if allowing one player to leave at the end of a season and replace him with another is cost effective and – considering signing on and recruitment fees – it is probably worse. A long contract is not dependent on division and I think there is a competitive advantage to be had by offering three year deals and renewing them when there is a year left so that players know they have a secure future and that that future is tied into the success of the club.

I have to say that when Lawn said many things (and the interview was about getting answers, not me asking questions) I choked and one of them was the idea that we could only afford Taylor for a year. I would rather have had another manager for longer.

My contention is that City did not get more out of McLaren and Flynn than they did from Evans in terms of the stated aim (promotion) and that we might have got a better result out of sticking with Evans but we would not have got worse (because of said aims). There is no way to challenge or prove this, which is a shame.

However had we given Evans a three year deal then and not signed McLaren then it strikes me that considering the club is reported to be in financial problems – and that replacing Evans with the better paid McLaren for no return in the aims of the club – then that would be been the responsible thing to.

There is an interesting and very relevant piece by Matthew Syed on the BBC Sport website today, the psychology of choking. He asks why all of us fall into situations where we know what we want to do, know how to do it but cannot execute it ?

The fear of failure seems all persuasive at VP. Often seen in football it usually seems to only affect one or two players, for example in not showing for the ball or getting rid of it doubly quickly. At present most of the team seems scared stiff of making a mistake. I agree with Michael that the attitude of the VP crowd this season has contributed heavily to this. It must be worth a goal a game to our opponents. A small number of players seem to be able to cope better than others, John Mc in goal, O’Brien and Ellison come to mind.

BfB

In 2016 BfB is almost exclusively written by Michael Wood. There is a Twitter feed at @boyfrombrazil but it is not often used for conversation. There is a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/boyfrombrazil but again it is not often used. There is a tendency to stay out of discussion about the articles but if you have a question or a query the best way to get it addressed is to send a mail to mail@boyfrombrazil.co.uk.